


In Arms

by pettiot



Series: Professionals Timeline [6]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Disappointing Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-22
Updated: 2011-10-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:34:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: The day of acceptance into CI5.  Doyle phones home.
Series: Professionals Timeline [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600894
Kudos: 1





	In Arms

There was silence.

Then she said, ‘Congratulations, I suppose.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Sounds a real achievement, Ray. Well done.' And shouted off to the side: 'Did you hear what Ray’s gone and done?’

How, you daft woman, when the only relay could have been into your head, bounced off the inside of your skull, and trumpeted out your other ear?

Amusement at his own callousness flared and died at his mother's continued call to the Husband's absence of attention.

A mercy, as the actual relay of information came muffled. Doyle pictured the phone cradled against an abundance of flesh, smothered in floral print. Horrendously blowsy, years out of date, fixed to the time of her life when she had decided to lock the front door and let herself die; shuffling towards the Husband, who had taken up residence on the couch about the same time the door to the outside world was locked, wearing his clean vest and slacks and slippers out of a habit which replaced life itself. Ray hated with an impossible revulsion the sight of the man's one good shirt hung on the back of the front door, in case of an unexpected call to company.

‘Mind,’ she said, ‘your father and I don’t really understand what you’ve done.'

Understanding required at least a modicum of interest: of course they didn't understand. The old man escaped into the sofa's constant embrace, and his mother, into a banal absence of expectation terrifying in its seeming inevitability.

Contrary to all evidence, she added, quavering, 'But you’re a good boy anyway. Well done.’

He grimaced. His good boyhood had ended at the age of ten, dead by his own hand.

You were not supposed to be proud of a life on the streets, Doyle suspected. So he never mentioned it, and once the police seemed the best route to reach his desired future he kept his vague links with the old gang suppressed. Not supposed to be proud of having fled the banal, full of rage, of having built a false family of urban scraps standing in place of moral guidance or adult leadership.

Except he was proud, had a fierce, vicious pride for the short life he carved for himself before the cops had caught him up, dispersed the gang, shattered him.

In the background, the asking came as a plaintive whine, ‘He didn’t get fired, did he? What was wrong with the police? _I_ only ever had one job all my life.’

Doyle wondered what else he’d expected.

‘Listen, mum, some men will be calling you soon to arrange an interview. They'll be from my new work. You'll need to talk to them, just...be truthful, ok? It's nothing to be worried about—’

‘Shirley’s a midwife now, did you know?’

He took a breath, surprised it shuddered into his lungs, as if constricted with rage. ‘You told me last time I called, and the time before.’

‘Best on staff, Sister said. Isn't that lovely? She’s taken up with Kevin, though. You remember Kevin?’

‘Not really.’

‘Gerald and Susanna's boy. You remember Gerald and Susanna.'

'Not really.'

'Kevin's a good boy, I suppose. But he's so _dark_. Not black, only dark. Sallow, like a Greek, from his grandfather, Susie says. I keep telling Shirl, think, Shirl, think about when your children and Katie's children and Ray's children are all playing together, think about what your children will look like next to the others. Oh, she never thinks. You know Shirl.'

'Not really.'

'Raymond. She's your sister!'

Doyle extracted himself without further insult, stared at the phone, and resisted the urge to put his fist through the wall. She was not going to cost him this job whatever shite she spouted, any more than she had cost him his looks, his life, his fucking happiness. Cowley assured him of that. But there were, he drawled, procedures to be followed, laddie, and interviewing the family was one of them, not to be voided for anyone. Whatever familial horrors he had encountered in his time in society, keeping the peace, what perspective he should have gained, nothing made him forgive them any more. Banal, unambitious, and embarrassingly stupid. By choice. Real living was just too hard.

Tired metal, countless conversations. The blank walls a good witness to unnothing.

Such situations his occasional sentiment provoked: the belief that perhaps, against all odds, they would have changed. Sheer guilt prevented him from the shock of rudeness which his mother probably needed to startle her out of the monotony, except he was still half-way convinced he had forced her so far into herself the rest of the world was an alien land. God only knew what Cowley's task force would think of the interview—

I was so sad after you left, Ray, so sad I hoped to catch pneumonia and die. Something. Anything to take me away. You were such a good boy. Why did you leave? Just like your father. The real one. The unholy one.

Such a thing people did to their memories, such sharp knives they used.

Superficially dismissed in the time taken to blink. That, at least, he was relatively practiced at, if not necessarily comfortable with it all.

A touch whose rough warmth had become annoying familiar cradled his shoulder.

'Bloody hell, Doyle! The Cow never booted you off, not after our last run. You were brilliant—'

Too open, Doyle twisted to avoid the earnest blue. Any outrage on his behalf was displaced, anyway. Doyle never doubted his own competence, only the relevance to another.

Even worse, Bodie seemed genuine in his outrage, and the intensity burned Doyle, still wading through his mother's residual vagueness. Over the past weeks, even when pressed to breaking, starved, beaten, sleep-deprived, the pseudo-torture of _Resisting Interrogation_ , Bodie had so infrequently demonstrated his relative youth, impetuousness, emotional self Doyle wondered if the bastard ever got mad on his own behalf. Because Doyle, from within his own reinforced shell of determination, had watched Bodie shoulder punishment delivered onto his own shoulders without more than the usual bond-building moan, only to lose his rag when witnessing the humiliation of someone he had decided was a friend. Choosing, though, to laugh at others so overwhelmed through no rhyme or reason Doyle detected, but for some animal instinct as to who could take a joke and who couldn't. Apparently Doyle could take it: once he had realised Bodie's game, he felt the more ridiculous that the slagging he was given had actually warmed him.

Bodie confounded Doyle.

Who realised, bemused, Bodie was actually outraged enough on his behalf to thin his lips and flare his nostrils, stalking towards Cowley's office as if intending to Have Words with their new employer.

'Hang on, hang on a sec! Oi!' Doyle leapt to arrest the suicidal motion, pulling Bodie back to his side too abruptly, a resistance he expected to find not there. He let go immediately, but Bodie seemed unconcerned with the sudden proximity; only, his outrage became enquiry. 'Of course I'm in.'

Bodie paused, slouched closer, and nodded at the phone. 'Looked like you were imparting bad news.'

'To them, probably seemed like it. Had to warn them about the final security clearance interviews.'

'Ah. The disapproving family.' Bodie rolled his eyes. 'I wouldn't know what it's like, I've never had one. Did you know, you can put the Cow as your next of kin, by preference? ' A flicker of hesitation, the pause where Doyle could almost feel Bodie grappling through an abbreviated repertoire for an appropriate social distraction. Evidently the answer was an outthrust hand. 'Congratulations are in order.'

The handshake, prosaic, seemed stranger for how readily Bodie used his hands otherwise.

'Congratulations to you too.' Fair enough they spent most of their time shouting at each other, but Bodie never seemed to resent Doyle needing to do so. And once in action, it wasn't... 'Wasn't half bad, being shackled to you.'

'Good god, Doyle, are you actually smiling?'

'Nah, it's a nasty rumour.'

'All right, I won't tell anyone, you sour bastard. I'd never ruin your reputation. You can do that yourself, and speaking of.' Bodie's accent climbed to regal heights, 'Care to come for a little drink with the rest of us elite soldierly forces?'

This time, Doyle did not fight the sentiment, allowing his response to the ordinary and the ridiculous resonate, jar against the awkwardness of the phone call, supersede it profoundly.

'Only ten what got through, Cowley told me.'

'That's about right. There's a big one planned. Last night of freedom before entering the war zone which is Cowley's England, so to speak. Last night to sow the untamed grain of your choice with a bird of your choice, without having having to fill out Cowley's bloody security logbook. The little perv.'

Doyle's cloud lifted completely; and realised it had been easing since Bodie had marched up, hackles raised on his behalf. A true novelty, that.

'Ah, it's not that bad.'

'Hm?'

'The paperwork. My bedhead was running out of wood to notch anyway.'

Beatific, Bodie grinned broadly. 'You can do mine.'

'Notch your bedhead?'

'My paperwork.'

'Oh, I see.'

'You'll really do it?'

'No.'

'Bastard,' Bodie said, amiable. 'And of course, you can type, too, can't you?'

'Too?'

'Well, in addition to everything else you do. Shoot, swim, fastest land speed time known to man in bright red trainers, braid hair. You never did explain that one.'

'I also cook. Very nicely, so they say.'

'Yeah, I'll bet you roast beautifully, on a spit.' Bodie surveyed him with inexplicable, unalloyed lust. 'Lean meat, low flame.'

'Let's just get that drink, eh?'

Already too close for comfort, Bodie curled his arm oh-so-casually across Doyle's shoulders, who decided then, swift and completely, he could more than bear it.

  



End file.
